The Illegal Alien Superintendent Shows Why We Need To Boost Election Security

News broke last week that Ian Andre Roberts, an illegal alien arrested in Iowa while serving as superintendent of Des Moines schools, appears to be an active registered Democratic voter in Maryland.

All Roberts apparently had to do was sign a form “under penalty of perjury” claiming to be a United States citizen. Then, Maryland officials registered him and left him on the rolls for nearly a decade. Were it not for his high-profile arrest, he would likely have stayed on the rolls.

This latest discovery of a noncitizen on our voting rolls — and not even in the state where he was illegally working and residing — should end the debate: It is time for Congress to pass the SAVE Act and require proof of citizenship to register and vote. When it comes to verifying that voters are citizens, Americans deserve better than an honor system.

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Federal law, shaped by years of partisan lawsuits, ties the hands of states. Even if Maryland officials wanted to verify claims of citizenship before registering a voter — and there is every reason to believe they do not — federal law bars them from doing so. All noncitizens like Roberts have to do to register is check a box.

That is simply not good enough.

That is not to suggest that Maryland officials are free from blame. It is scandalous that a noncitizen was apparently left on the rolls for so long, doubly so given that Roberts had not lived in Maryland for years. That is a series of failures that warrant investigation.

And that may only scratch the surface. Maryland’s administrator of elections, Jared DeMarinis, recently rebuffed a Justice Department request to inspect state voter rolls in part due to concerns that “the voter registration list will be used for enforcement of immigration laws against Maryland residents.”

Just how many more noncitizens do Maryland officials think are on state rolls?

The fact is, noncitizens can and do register to vote. Last year alone, Texas and Ohio announced they had discovered noncitizens on their rolls, Oregon mistakenly registered 1,259 noncitizens, and Virginia had to fight off a lawsuit from the Biden Justice Department trying to force the Commonwealth to put self-identified noncitizens back on its rolls.

The Left wants it to be easy for noncitizens to register and hard for states to stop them. It’s time to reverse that paradigm.

That’s where the SAVE Act comes in. The bill, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this year, requires states to verify citizenship before registering anyone to vote in federal elections. Americans would simply be asked to provide routine documents, such as a birth certificate or a passport, to prove citizenship. That’s something Americans already routinely do when getting driver’s licenses and REAL IDs. And since most voters get registered at the DMV, compliance is easy.

The public overwhelmingly supports this. A 2024 Gallup survey found that an incredible 83% of Americans think voters should have to prove citizenship. Nearly everyone understands that confidence in elections depends on laws that bring transparency, accountability, and security to the process. Proving citizenship is the first and most basic step.

Despite the public consensus, congressional Democrats — eager to placate the angriest voices on the far Left — almost uniformly oppose the SAVE Act. They argue that noncitizen voting is rare, but ignore that each illegal vote cancels out the ballot of an American citizen. When many races each year are decided by fewer than 10 votes, just a few fraudulent ballots could make all the difference.

Democrats also claim that married women who change their names would be disenfranchised, but that argument is absurd on its face. Married women have no problem getting REAL IDs, which already require Americans to provide proof of citizenship. And the SAVE Act has numerous safeguards built into the bill to ensure that no eligible citizens are barred from the voting process.

This scandal is a wake-up call. The honor system for demonstrating citizenship is fundamentally flawed, and it is time for Congress to fix it. The Senate should pass the SAVE Act and send it to President Trump without delay. Americans deserve to know that only citizens are voting in American elections.

Jason Snead is the Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.